Yeah, that's right, the swine flu's cute little curly tail can shoot waves of fire out of it.... BEWARE!!!

So for some inane reason, Matty and I decided to set up the television once again.

And yes, we are now stuck in front of it as the sun shines outside and as children are laughing and playing in the street, we are cowering on our couch experiencing the dire consequences and terrific trauma that await us with the oncoming swine flu.

To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure if I would have heard about this so-called “swine flu” if I hadn’t turned on the news this afternoon.

In its so typical way, the news once again is instilling fear and paranoia in the minds of the masses.

Apparently pandemics come in waves, and we are experiencing the first wave of this one.  The stern faced anchor on the television so graciously tells us that the third wave of the swine flu should be coming to Vancouver just in time for the 2010 olympics.

Maybe I’ll look back at this a couple years down the road when the swine flu has fully thinned the masses, and the world has become a realistic portrayal of Outbreak or Resident Evil. But for Christ’s sake, does everything on the news have to be so God-damned exaggerated and thematic??

Me thinks it’s time to put the television back in the closet where it belongs.

It’s comforting to know that the fellow has finally lifted his chin.

I’m shocked to find myself at home this evening, and amazed at the potential to actually use my brain in the morning.  Free time can be a curse to a man who finds it hard to escape the sleeves, the cans, and the bottles of another mindless evening.  But think of the potential?  Think of all the possibilities that I could be shying away from.  What am I missing out on?  Keep yourself down Trevor, tied to your worn mattress, because you, are as worn as the weary springs and the wooden beams that seems to bend slowly, their bellies swooping closer and closer to the floorboards.

So, Facebook, once again you’ve given me something more to prop you up for.  In a peculiar combination of keywords, you, Facebook, and that little magical googlebot, have directed all these silly readers my way.

Trying so hard to write for an audience that I’ve formulated in my mind, and all of a sudden I’m talking to a room that’s basked in shadows, wondering where all those ideal readers–the ones that I concocted in the bathtub, and on drunken smokey stoops– have all gone.

But I’m not afraid to take a diversion.

Granted, I’ve struggled with transition, and the thought of moving up and beyond anything, has kept me in one place or another longer than I would like to admit.

Thailand had me scared and shaking on its islands, eating pasta and bread from a woman who invited me in.  And I wish I could admit like all the lonely old men that venture forth from their dingy Canadian basement suites, that I too had come to have found a Thai woman’s arms.  But I was taken by her food, by the opportunity for anything that seemed familiar.

Maybe it was the bulldog, but I blame it on her bread.

Then the home at the back of the building, the one through the parking lot.  The house we tried to make a home.  It so easily became a prison, and I never would have guessed that I would have put myself somewhere with such little windows and such little ceilings that knocked down on me.  And the ones upstairs that moved across the floor with a clunk and a scrape.  Slowly dragging their imaginary walkers across their hard wood at all hours of the night and day.

And the bakery.  The one where I woke at three in the morning just to arrive on time, back when I still listened to music in the chunky green discman.  Back when I lived on the other side of the bridge, on the other side of the Georgia Straight.  And it wasn’t the long walk that finally deterred me from coming back for more, or the cutting off of all those dreadlocks of mine (the ones that hung so low), and it wasn’t the lack of compensation, or the heat of the ovens in the middle of summer, and not the depression, or the fear that I would be stuck there morning after morning, under-rested and overworked.

Perhaps once again, it was the bread.

So what?  Perhaps I’m stuck again,  and although I trudge along, this week I’m lost in the bottle and the bars.

Free time can be a curse to a man who’s easily swayed.

And Facebook can be a most peculiar mate, who’s warmth comes less from the baking of bread, and more from the hum of all its funny little stories.

Waking up yesterday morning, I realized that I’ve been much too gracious to my liver.

Clearly it’s been almost a month since I spent all morning and early afternoon in bed.  Clearly it’s been almost a month since I set out for my first coffee of the day in the early evening.  But this was the entirety of my Sunday: setting out late and returning home early to spend the evening in pajamas on the couch, popping Advil’s and drinking water.

Speaking of clarity, I believe that it became crystal clear to me and a couple of friends, that I am at my absolute judgiest when I still have vodka coursing through my hung-over veins at 2:00 on a Sunday afternoon.

So, as many a weekend has tended to play out over the years, I’ve once again gone from Gene Kelly on Friday night, to Oscar the Grouch on Sunday.

But it is in this judgiest of judgey moods that some of the most ridiculous and hilarious things seem to escape my brain.  And so I’m forced to wonder once again, where creativity comes from?  I’m forced to wonder when I became such an asshole?

And I’m not ashamed, I’m just critical, exceptionally so at times.  And its caused me to make exceptional friends and extraordinary enemies as I’ve gone about my days.  It’s caused me creative inspiration and the courage to take a step in what I feel is the right direction and really stick to it.  It’s caused me time and time again to take a look at my life and ask myself “what the fuck, Trevor?”

And maybe some day I’ll change, but for now, if you come into the coffee shop at 2:00 on Sunday afternoon with a frizzy pony tail on your head, and a face so made up your skin looks more like the epidermis of a tuber, then I just might call you a “turnip”.

All in the comfort of my close-minded little bubble that is.

After writing a little piece a couple of months ago about a fellow student in one of my classes reaking of mothballs, the gods have decided to impart their judgement and it isn’t kind.  In fact, it’s suffocating.

You see I live 2 floors above a rather “trashy” little family.

Stinky Stanky Mothball Me. I guess flies wouldn't be attracted to the smell of moth ball fumes, but it's more a demonstration of my artistic abilities. Stare in awe.

They leave their laundry in the machines for days, literally.  They litter the lawn with their children’s toys, claiming ownership over an apparently communal space.  And they yell and scream at their children and each other at all times of the day and night.  But this last action of theirs is beyond forgivable, and fucking ridiculous.

After seeing a cockroach in their apartment, they have decided to put mothballs into the heat vents.  The same vents that run through the entire house, and that all of us share.  Awesome.  So now, my little home at the top of the stairs reaks of mothballs, reaks.

The air is thick with the stuff, so much that it’s been giving Meghan and I headaches.  And now in math class, I’m no longer haunted by the smell of mothballs following me, I am the one bringing the haunt.

The front row of Math 1118 at Langara is now completely saturated by the odor of an impromptu mothball posse.

Now when I get out of the swimming pool my towel smells, my retardedly expensive jackets smells, and my bed smells: all of it moth balls.  I’ve even convinced myself twice now that people have moved seats on the bus because of the way I smell.

And to top it all off, apparently this little family two floors down is unreachable.  Great.

I’ve always taken myself to be a man with loads of common sense: I moved out young, struggled to pay my bills on time, traveled through Asia, and learned what it meant to be lonely and in love at the same time. But, year after year the daunting task of paying my taxes comes knocking on my door and I can’t help but run for the hills.

I’ll admit freely and openly that I’ve fallen on my parents year after year. I pass off the task to their accountant and impatiently wait for the return to roll in. But, this year I’ve put my financial foot to the pavement and taken on the task.

I wonder sometimes if this whole process was something we all learned in school while I was smoking a joint behind the Subway or slumbering on my desk. Is this the vocabulary of the learned only?

“Exemptions”

“Deductions,” and

“Refunds”

All I’ve taken notice to over the years is the money that magically materializes in my chequing account.

Has this become the financial right of passage for our generation? Circumcision, bar mitzvahs, and tattoos all feel secondary to something so daunting. Is a man not truly a man until he can find “line 150” on his 2007 tax return?

If so then the state of my shoebox, full of a plethora of bills and forms all written in words that might sooner be hieroglyphics than the English language will give you the answer:

I’m still a starry-eyed, pre-pubescent boy with his first pubes, staring at the construction workers across the street unknowingly about to get his fore skin chopped off.

Taxes, be good to me.

It seems that slim traces of the partying that occurred in buckets are coming back to get me.

Most people when faced with a split in the cranium would probably turn to silence, advil, or perhaps a hot bath, but myself have decided to sit as close to my computer as possible, writing silly words and flipping over a friend’s pictures of some gay summer event in some long-faraway land called America.

Even at the worst of times, I can’t seem to separate myself completely from my electronics.

But anyways, now that I’m recovering nicely from my momentary blip in sanity and good health.  Now that my brain has returned itself to its normal wavelengths or what have you, I seem drawn to old ponderings of mine on sexuality and sanity.  I seem drawn to dig up old dirt, if for just one moment and wonder what it means to be a gay man.

Over the course of the weekend I was privy to school books and cider, kareoke and crab cakes.  I was the guest of many a house and my time left sleeping was little to be desired.  But amongst all the traveling from here to there, the singing and the school work, I was left with a couple souvenirs of the weekend, namely a hand-drawn map of the vagina in my back pocket.  I know precisely the circumstance in which it came from: a circumstance that has been had on many of occasions before, but I’m forced to wonder if maybe it really is that easy.

Maybe as my friends Malissa and Kris lead me to believe, there is a possibility for me and the female persuasion.  Everything will be coming up poontang if I just grab up my vagina map, jump on the back of a unicorn, and go on my sexuality altering journey.

Watch out ladies!  Here I come!!

But as much as I may have angered the gods of pots and pans, the deities of forks and spoons, it seems nothing compared to the fiery fury that has erupted over traffic signs in Illinois and Texas.  Hackers have found their way inside road signs intended to warn drivers, and have managed to change the warnings of construction and detours to that of zombies and raptors.

It is comforting in today’s day and age that there are still humans out there concerned for the greater good.  Amongst falling and bouncing dollars, political unrest, and complete environmental saturation there are people willing to risk the $250 fine and take a couple minutes out of their busy schedules to do what matters most:

KEEP US ALL AWAY FROM THOSE FUCKING ZOMBIES AND RAPTORS!!

So I finally figured out where the smell of moth-balls is coming from in math class: this manky brown, hooded jacket that seems to stalk me as I move my way around the classroom day after day.  I have even gone so far as to experiment in different spots amongst the room, but time and time again, here she comes, late as usual, managing to find a comfortable spot right beside me.  Amongst all the didgets and numbers, figures, and dollar signs: the all-pervasive odour of moth balls.

They say that you get used to the smell of something because your olfactory cells fill up, or fire all their little chemical somethings to the brain, or some shit like that.  Purely something that  I have absolutely no recollection of from high school Biology.  But, with this smell, something’s not working right in the cellular department, because even after a two hour class of talking about the principles of transitivity, or equations of value, I am still perpetually distracted by the horrible odour.

So I’ve come today to think of various solutions for my problem:

• Do I just flat out tell the poor girl who barely speaks English that frankly, she’s kind of smelly?

• Do I, being the considerate person I am, take into account the fact that her English is sketchy at best, poke her shoulder, point at her jacket and wave my hand in front of my face with a grimace of conveyance?

• Do I pass her an anonymous note when she gets up to go to the washroom?

• Do I leave her one of my business cards, so that she can come, check out the site and discover the secrets of her jacket in the comfort of her own home?

• Or, do I somehow convey all of my disgust through the universal language of numbers….  Perhaps suggesting that she utilize the following equation on her next assignment:

U=(Pu x Pu)/me=:(

Evolution is a many splendid thing.  With the invention of the typewriter and the personal computer, the brain was forced to think differently and the fingers were now required to move and operate in ways that seems unfeasible.  Is it then enough to only refer to the biological tendency to evolve physically?  Is it not possible then with the creation of social networking, our sharing of these status updates, these tweets, some of us might soon find ourselves thinking and behaving in a manner more consistent to life on the internet?

At the moment, for me, this is a delicious quandry.  It is a question that has me thinking deeper than the 160 allowable characters on facebook and twitter.  For me, it an exercise in something that is beyond my next hiccup on the page, and healthy, living proof that I am above social networking to some degree.

Critics of this form of communication ask questions about the value of the information that we so easily share with one another.  They wonder about the degree to which some of us share our dirty little secrets.  They ponder about the value of privacy and personal safety.  Many simply state: “Who cares about all the boring shitty little things that you are doing, why do I give a fuck that you just ate cherry pie, or petted an iguana?”

Well, I kinda do.

Weirdly enough, it brings me great satisfaction, from the comfort of my home, to know the little things that people are doing.  I suppose I believe that one of the greatest assets our society has is the information that we each hold in our heads, and our ability to share it with each other.

Sure I’ve thought about the sanctity of tradition and the loss of romance in communication.  Where once there was a phone call there is now the ever ubiquitous text message.  We’ve lost a lot of faff in some areas and introduced a whole slew of it in others.  Like the slow transition from traditional corks in wine bottles to the twist off cap, there is a romantical past that we have begun to leave behind us.  Even this blog, this plethora of thoughts knows nothing about the pen and paper.  This blog will never know the grace and distinction of being hand written, it will never feel the seductive slide of paper on paper as it is slipped out of an envelope, it will never know how truly exclusive it could have felt to be tucked away on a shelf somewhere, hidden and out of reach.

These things are all slowly being lost and I suppose, in turn some of us have become less uncommon because of it.  In a sense we have become something scandalous and are sitting with our legs wide open to the world, waiting for the wandering hand to slip its way down our knickers.

But, you know, as much as I’m aware of all the downsides to this loss of romanticism, and as much as I’m aware of all the trivial things that I could continue to keep to myself, I’ve never been much for keeping my legs shut, and frankly I love a stranger’s hand down my knickers.